TAKE ~ me out to the ‘STROS-GAME,
Don’t boom the music so LOUD!
Lose all the rappers – and tee shirt SHOTS,
They-make-me-so-mad ~ that ~ I-can-see-SPOTS!
Let’s just ROOT, ROOT, ROOT for the ASTROS,
Organ music will do all the SAME!
And if – THEY – DON’T ~ WIN – IT – THIS YEAR,
JIMMY – CRANE’S – TO – BLAME!
____________________
“All work and no play made Johnny a dull boy.
All work and no play made Johnny a dull boy.
All work and no play made Johnny a dull boy.”
Look. We all have to learn in our own ways. Johnny Manziel will either learn the hard way that maturity is pretty much a requirement for the full use of his skills or he will have to live with the consequences that come with prolonged or permanent immaturity. Remember the old saying? – We are only young once, but we may choose to remain immature indefinitely. If turning 40 in 17 years, and suffering the lessons of crystal clear hindsight doesn’t do it, then the hospital, the domestic relations courts, bankruptcy, the penitentiary, the mental hospitals or drug rehab centers, or a job sacking groceries at HEB will have to suffice while he’s waiting for the cemetery.
That’s just how it is. And the rest of us know the truth from our own mild to bloody personal experiences in the real world. We’ll just have to wait and see where “Here’s Johnny” leads as it quickly transforms into “Here Goes Johnny.”
Here’s a link to a January 6, 2016 piece of news about Le Bron James’s marketing agency cutting ties with Manziel. It only appeared in the Houston Chronicle as a sports section sidebar today, Sunday, January 17th. Too bad more of Le Bron wasn’t able to rub off on Johnny while the two were still together in Cleveland. Every gifted young athlete could learn a lot about personal maturity from “The King.” That man James is amazing in so many realms, but his factual place in Manziel’s young professional life simply supports one of the difficult truths about growing up. – Until someone is ready from the pain of their own consequential experiences, the greatest teachers in the world cannot help them.
Good Luck on reaching an early enrollment in the School of Hard Knocks, Johnny Manziel. Hopefully, you will get to graduate from there while you still have any football opportunities left in your bag of good choices.
____________________
Dr. Richard M. Uray
A Man Ahead of His Time
I’m feeling old. Maybe it’s the fact that this year my 1956 St. Thomas High School class is celebrating our 60th graduation anniversary. Maybe the truth simply is – we are old.
Damn we’re old! And damn-if-i-know where the time went. All I know is – the Basilian Order priests at dear old STHS did their very best years ago to goad us into knowledge that would help us find the wisdom trail once we were old enough to appreciate the lessons of personal experience that awaited each of us singularly along the way.
During the summer of 1956, using today’s linguistic expression, I was uber pumped to be starting college in the fall. I was happy, single, in love, playful, still playing some baseball in a summer CYO league, still catching a few games at Buff Stadium, working in a little men’s clothing store downtown, and just taking in all the joy I could find in each Houston summer day. Man, I was wired. The whole summer of 1956 was a golden time for me.
I was going to have to work to go to college, but that was OK with me. I would be enrolling as a freshman radio and television major in September and looking forward gratefully to the fact that I had been accepted for admission into one of the great pioneer programs of media study at the University of Houston. Sadly, but like so many others, including most of the faculty themselves, we lacked the clear wisdom at that time that television was far more of an ever-expanding media phenomenon unto itself – and not merely an expansion of radio, but with pictures.
Only one of my instructors, Dr. Richard Uray, seemed to “get” the point I just tried to make, but I was among the limited segment of the herd who “got” the intellectual part of his message between 1956-57, while still lacking the divine inspiration of its Delphic truth until years later – when I saw it unfolding all around us through the technological advances that proved him a prophet without honor in his time.
Uray used to say things about TV like the following: “There’s an old expression in show business that goes like this: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet!’ – Well, that old saying covers where TV is today in the late 1950s. – We ain’t seen nothing yet. – Color television is coming soon. And that will be followed by better, larger picture quality on sets at home. – Then you can count on other things too that friends tell me are not far away. We will soon enough, within the next ten to fifteen years, have a working tape technology that will allow us to record moving pictures with sound. Unlike motion picture film, these television tapes will require no development. They will be immediately available for broadcast use on television as we now use audio tapes on radio. – The implications for where this technology alone may take us defies our human imagination. – Maybe someday we will even figure out ways for people to use television directly with each other. I’m not quite sure how that might happen, but, when it does, television is going to change the whole way we now see our world.”
Dr. Uray understood. Progress is a direction, not a destination. Progress says : Anything that works well or serves a useful purpose can possibly be improved, if we have the desire, the will, and the energy to pursue it over however much time it takes.
Thank you, Dr. Uray, for being a visionary and an inspiration. I will always be grateful, even if I did change my major field to psychology in 1958. Thank you for helping me to see what I wasn’t totally ready to see or appreciate when I first heard you speak of such things. I did finally “get” the whole apple – and I’ve never let it go. Your hopeful and expanded view on how to look forward to even greater possibility in anything that is good and true now has lived within me for sixty years. And I’m still counting. At least, through the time it takes to finish this column and go to sleep.
____________________
Note: Dr. Richard M. Uray (1924-1998) was only 32 and he then had a full head and mustache of jet black hair when I first met him as a broadcasting instructor at UH. He also had one of those beautifully resonant baritone speaking voices that churns out clearly spoken words as though they were scriptural, but destined for delivery at a “Front Page” style “here-it-is, get-it-or not” pace.
Uray later spent most of his academic career as Broadcast Chair of the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and was inducted into the South Carolina Broadcasting Association Hall of Fame in 1995, three years prior to his death. USC at Columbia SC has established broadcasting scholarships in his name as the most meaningful way to observe the memory of one who was both a seer and fine teacher.
For further information, use this link and scroll down the page to find the material written about Dr. Uray.
http://www.scba.net/mullinaxrecollections.htm
____________________
1.6 billion dollars is a big hit for all of us “losers” in Wednesday night’s Powerball Lottery. I should have honed in on my baseball memory bank and converted my quick pick long-odds-against-me-“fate” into a selection that soared meditations into Powerball winning destiny.
And any of us who “think” baseball daily as surely as the sun rises in the NL/AL East could have honed in on the winning Powerball ticket numbers that burned rightly in meditatively first attracting the right questions to answers we all know:
Here they are ~ after about fifteen minutes of “OM” on the range of the six famous baseball questions that contain questions with numerical answers that also contained the five ticket numbers attached to the Powerball Number:
Question 1: In what year did John McGraw of the New York Giants refuse to play the Boston Red Sox in what would have been the second consecutive World Series?
Answer: 1904
Question 2: In what year did the Chicago Cubs win their most recent World Series?
Answer: 1908
Question 3: In what year did the Chicago Black Sox Scandal take place?
Answer: 1919
Question 4: In what year did Babe Ruth hit his longstanding record of 60 home runs in a single season:
Answer: 1927
Question 5: In what year did the “Gas House Gang” St. Louis Cardinals and Dizzy Dean defeat the Detroit Tigers in a seven-game World Series?
Answer: 1934
Powerball Question: In what year did the San Francisco Giants begin their active streak of winning the World Series every other year in even-numbered years?
Answer: 2010
So what? ~ Here’s what: Wednesday’s serious money lotto had to be the biggest “woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’ ” disappointment for all of us numbers-loving baseball fans who saw those numbers for what they really are in our eternal list of special dates. – We had ’em, folks. We simply didn’t focus freely enough on putting our minds on these cherished numbers from baseball history that make up so much of our daily enjoyment in life. Had we done so, we just may have bought one of the winning lottery tickets.
Of course, having said that, I might also have played the Houston baseball angle with 28, 31, 61*, 62, 65 and a powerball number of 05.
____________________
Hoyt WIlhelm
Knuckleballer
Hall of Fame
Baseball Super Fan
Autograph Collector
Bob Gibson
Fastballer
Hall of Fame
A very good friend told me a story yesterday about an experience he once had with Hall of Fame pitchers Hoyt Wilhelm and Bob Gibson during an appearance they were making in Houston. It was so funny that I couldn’t resist sharing it here with the part of the world that is our readership at The Pecan Park Eagle, but I also had to come up with a fair way to write the story that would both keep it fresh and also serve the interest of protecting my friend’s identity, in the remote event that he might not want to be personally acknowledged as the baseball autograph super fan collector who set these whole chain of his real and my imagined conclusions into motion as to how this tale began and “might have” concluded.
Let’s just tag my anonymous baseball buddy with “Super Fan” and leave it to that anonymity forever. Only “Super Fan” is free to reveal his true identity on these public pages. I will never tell.
Here’s how it happened:
Once upon a time, Super Fan came unexpectedly upon two Hall of Fame pitchers, Hoyt Wilhelm and Bob Gibson, sitting happily together at a Houston public event. (I won’t even go so far as to say it was a baseball game – or even to reveal the name of the ballpark where the anonymous site chance meeting took place.)
Be that as it may, Super Fan was prepared, as per usual, for this sort of thing. He carried with him a brand new MLB baseball and a jet black permanent ink roller ball pen to get just the right kind of non-fading signatures of each man that he so coveted.
The Hall of Famers greeted Super Fan with understanding and respect for his interest in their signatures. Hoyt Wilhelm smiled and even reached out to take the pen and ball that Super Fan wanted to use in this exercise.
“Say, man,” Wilhelm suddenly uttered, as he rolled the ball on all stitched sides for a total look. “This is a dad gum brand new baseball! – You don’t want me to sign a ball that doesn’t even look like it’s been used in a game, do you?”
“I kind of wanted you sign a fresh ball,” Super Fan tried to utter.
“Well, ‘fresh’ ain’t good enough for me,” Wilhelm cut in to say. “Any ball I sign has got to, at least, look like it’s seen some game action!”
Wham!
Before anything else could be said, Wilhelm had stood up and slammed the ball hard to the rough concrete floor in front of his seat and then caught the now baptized article on the first high bounce.
“There!” Wilhelm said, as he first observed and then showed the now rough two-inch skimmer streak that newly blessed the ball’s cover on the sweet spot.
“Now I can sign the thing!” Wilhelm added as he wrote his name over the tattered section and handed the ball to the now sinister-grinning and also standing Bob Gibson.
“Shoot, Wilhelm!” Gibson chuckled. “You’re a knuckleballer. You didn’t put any real game action on this ball at all. Let me show you what a Gibson fastball will do to bring out the game action life of this little old baseball!”
KA-BOOM!
Gibson hurled the baseball to the concrete in front of his space with the same kind of force he once used on the mound. It’s contact with the sidewalk-hard floor sounded like a mortal landing of such a pitch upon the head of an unfortunate batter. It bounced thirty feet high, but Gibson also caught his descending treasure on the one-bounce fly and then spent time admiring the gash that now stretched across another stitching as an imprint on two panels of the Super Fan baseball. Then he too signed the ball and returned it to Super Fan, as both Hall of Famers shook his hand and thanked him for his sincere interest in their autographs.
In his wrap up of the story, Super Fan told me: “I was lucky the ball survived as a recognizable relic with the signatures of those two great Hall of Fame pitchers.
“No,” I said to Super Fan, “you were lucky that Bob Gibson put the act to rest when he did!”
“What would you have done had Bob Gibson carried the cause of game-worthy appearances in this matter to the next level?”
“What if Gibson had kept the ball after he signed it and – then – made the following suggestion:
” ‘OK, Super Fan! Stand back over there about 60’6″ and lean your head forward! – After the next pitch, you will be able to tell your friends the ball was your prize for making the mistake of taking batting practice against Bob Gibson!’ ”
Super Fan laughed hard at my suggestion, but the look in his eyes (which I had to imagine since we were talking over the phone, but it’s one I have seen before in him in other matters of far-fetched possibility) told a slightly different story. His eyes said, his soul said, “I almost wish that Gibson had beaned me. – I’d be a different person today.”
Different person all right. A dead versus a live person.
I’m glad he didn’t bean you, Super Fan. Had he done so, I doubt you would have been around last night to tell me your very funny true story. And I would be forced to grieve the loss of your fun company.
____________________
_____________________
Publisher, Editor, Writer
The Pecan Park Eagle
Houston, Texas
1946 Newark Eagles
World Championship Ring
Owned by Player, Cecil Cole
Sold at Auction in 2010
We are hoping that someone asked Monte Irvin these questions prior to this sad week of his passing: “Did you ever own a 1946 Newark Eagles World Championship ring? If so, what happened to it, Monte? If not, how do you explain the Cecil Cole ’46 ring that surfaced for a 2010 auction by his family? It reportedly sold for $11,750.
The auction site claims that the Cole 1946 ring “is the only Negro League World Championship ring we have ever seen. We have no idea if others have survived, or if all players on the team even received one.”
Monte Irvin was living in a Houston retirement community by the time of the 1910 ring auction. Did anyone from the auction site try to contact Monte to see what he knew about the Cecil Cole ring?
Maybe someone among you knows the answers here. If not, here’s the auction site link for anyone else interested in getting to the truth about the rarity of the Cecil Cole 1946 Negro League World Championship ring. It’s hard to imagine only one of these precious artifacts as the sole survivor of rings ever awarded – not merely to the 1946 Newark Eagles, but to all Negro League championship teams for all time.
http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/auction/2010/1723.html#photos
____________________
Same Cecil Cole Ring
Side View
“If we had known he wanted to be a dictator, we would have kept him around and made him an umpire.”
~ Monte Irvin on Fidel Castro’s failed tryout with the former’s Cuban ball club.
December 9, 2009
By now, you probably know the sad, but unsurprising news, considering his age. Two days ago, on January 11, 2016, Baseball Hall of Famer Monte Irvin passed away in his sleep at his Houston home at the age of 96. When I heard, my first thoughts hovered briefly along the lines of what a beautiful way to go that would be for any of us, but deservedly so for someone like Monte Irvin, a man who gave and received a ton of love in all he did in his lifetime as one of baseball’s greatest examples of what giving oneself to life with all one’s total humanity should be about for all of us.
Monte Irvin gave of all his passion and ability to everything he apparently did. And we loved him for it. He also was a thinking, sensitive, aware, and active life soldier in the ongoing battle that belongs to all of us in the war against racism and other forces that work against social justice and equity for all.
Monte will be missed, but the energy for the good he set in motion during his long lifetime shall remain in flight. Relative to the idea that even the movement of a single butterfly’s wings have their own singular altering effect on the future of our planet, Monte Irvin flew through life on the wings of the (Newark) eagle that he lived to be – and the currents for the better destiny in human relations he set in motion shall awaken others to the same call – long beyond this day of our physical separation from him.
God Bless You, Monte Irvin! Our love for you and all you’ve done for the rest of us will live forever.
Here’s a link to Monte Irvin’s SABR biography:
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/883c3dad
And here are couple of past columns from The Pecan Park Eagle that are tied to Monte Irvin:
December 9, 2009: The Monte Irvin-Larry Dierker “Baseball: Then and Now” SABR Meeting at Minute Maid Park:
On June 9, 2010, it was my honor to be the lucky transporter of Monte Irvin to a special Saturday meeting of SABR at the all too brief reopening of the Finger Furniture Houston Sports Museum at their Buffalo Stadium site/Gulf Freeway @ Cullen location. Since we had to travel from far west side of Houston, the area where we both lived, we shared a little more than an hour of total baseball talk time that day in my car – and Monte was as warm and funny and wonderful as someone I might as well have known personally forever.
I felt so overwhelmed by the presence of this great Hall of Fame star from my baseball card, Game-of-the-Day childhood memories, that something happened to me that rarely, if ever, occurs. Soon after I reached home, I was aware that I had brought with me the uplifted mood and good feelings about Monte’s presence, but little detail of all the things he told me openly and in response to my questions – and, I mean, we talked about his near miss for the role that Jackie Robinson played in breaking the color line, his days as an all sports athlete while he was growing up in Orange, New Jersey, his days in the Negro League as a member of the Newark Eagles, team owner Effa Manley, the great Josh Gibson, Leo Durocher, the 1951 New York Giants, and Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World” against Ralph Branca, – that it wasn’t what he said about anything that stood out in my memory. It was the live way he spoke about everything as one who was overjoyed (most of the time) to simply have been there for all of it. – My time with this baseball icon proved to be the closest ride I ever took in a time machine – and the wonderful Monte Irvin had been the Captain of our flight.
Thank you, Monte! – And Godspeed to the memories, perspectives, wisdom, and joys you now take with you to the galaxy of a spiritual realm that is, one and the same, both very close to all of us, even now, and yet, too, so very, very far away.
____________________
SABR Analyst and Pecan Park Eagle Contributor Bill Analyst takes a look today at the 2016 Hall of Fame Vote.
Analyzing the 2016 Hall of Fame Vote
By Bill Gilbert
The Baseball Writers Association of America elected 2 players to the Hall of Fame this year, Ken Griffey. Jr. (99.3%) and Mike Piazza (83.0%). Griffey’s percentage was the highest ever recorded, exceeding Tom Seaver’s 98.84% in 1992.
Of those on the ballot who were not elected, Jeff Bagwell (71.6%) and Tim Raines (69.8%) were the closest and should be in good position for election in 2017.
Fifteen of the seventeen holdovers on the ballot received a higher percentage of the votes in 2016 than in 2015 led by Mike Mussina (+18.4%), Edgar Martinez (+16.4%), Bagwell (+15.9%) Alan Trammell (+15.8% in his final year on the writers ballot), Raines (+14.8%), Curt Schilling (+13.1%) and Piazza (+13.1%). The only holdovers to lose ground were Gary Sheffield (from 11.7% to 11.6%) and Nomar Garciaparra (from 5.5% to 1 8% which removes him from future ballots)
The voters are still largely negative with regards to players associated with Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds each picked up about 7.5% but are mired in the mid 40% range.
There was a significant change in the voting population in the 2016 election. Writers who have been inactive professionally for 10 years are no longer eligible to vote, reducing the total number of ballots cast from 549 in 2015 to 440 in 2016.. Thus, some players on the ballot who received a higher percentage of votes actually received fewer total votes.
Following is a list of candidates that received votes in the election this year. For the holdovers, vote totals for last year are also shown.
| Player | Ballot Years | 2016 Votes | 2016 % | 2015 VOTES | 2015 % | Vote Differ 2016 | Vote Differ % | |||||||
| Ken Griffey | 1 | 437 | 99.3 | |||||||||||
| M Piazza | 4 | 365 | 83.0 | 384 | 69.9 | -19 | 13.1 | |||||||
| Jeff Bagwell | 6 | 315 | 71.6 | 306 | 71.6 | 9 | 15.9 | |||||||
| Tim Raines | 9 | 397 | 69.8 | 302 | 55.0 | 5 | 14.8 | |||||||
| T Hoffman | 1 | 296 | 67.3 | |||||||||||
| C Schilling | 4 | 230 | 52.3 | 215 | 39.2 | 15 | 13.1 | |||||||
| R Clemens | 4 | 199 | 45.2 | 206 | 37.5 | -7 | 7.7 | |||||||
| B Bonds | 4 | 195 | 44.3 | 202 | 36.8 | -7 | 7.5 | |||||||
| E Martinez | 7 | 191 | 43.4 | 148 | 27.0 | 43 | 16.4 | |||||||
| M Mussina | 3 | 189 | 43.0 | 135 | 24.6 | 54 | 18.4 | |||||||
| ATrammell | 15 | 180 | 40.9 | 138 | 25.1 | 42 | 15.8 | |||||||
| Lee Smith | 14 | 150 | 34.1 | 166 | 30.2 | -16 | 3.9 | |||||||
| F McGriff | 7 | 92 | 20.9 | 71 | 12.9 | 21 | 8.0 | |||||||
| Jeff Kent | 3 | 73 | 16.6 | 77 | 14.0 | – 4 | 2.6 | |||||||
| L Walker | 6 | 68 | 15.5 | 65 | 11.8 | 3 | 3.7 | |||||||
| M McGwire | 10 | 54 | 12.3 | 55 | 10.0 | -1 | 2.3 | |||||||
| G Sheffield | 2 | 51 | 11.6 | 64 | 11.7 | -13 | – 0.1 | |||||||
| B Wagner | 1 | 46 | 10.5 | |||||||||||
| S Sosa | 3 | 31 | 7.0 | 36 | 6.6 | -5 | 0.4 | |||||||
| J Edmonds | 1 | 11 | 2.5 | |||||||||||
| Garciaparra | 2 | 8 | 1.8 | 30 | 5.5 | -22 | -3.7 | |||||||
| M Sweeney | 1 | 3 | 0.7 | |||||||||||
| D Eckstein | 1 | 2 | 0.5 | |||||||||||
| J Kendall | 1 | 2 | 0.5 | |||||||||||
| GAnderson | 1 | 1 | 0.2 |
In addition to Griffey, two other ballot newcomers received enough votes to remain on the ballot. Both were closers, Trevor Hoffman (67.3%) and Billy Wagner (+10.5%). Hoffman’s high vote total in his first year on the ballot suggests that he should get elected fairly quick[y. In something of a surprise, Jim Edmonds fell off the ballot in his first year with only 2.5% of the votes. In addition to Trammell and Garciaparra, Mark McGwire will also be removed from future ballots since he has completed ten years without being elected.
The following seven players were on the ballot but did not receive any votes: Brad Ausmus, Luis Castillo, Troy Glaus, Mark Grudzielanek, Mike Hampton, Mike Lowell and Randy Winn.
For the third straight year, the writers averaged over eight votes on their ballots versus the historical average of 6 -7. If this continues, the problem of an overcrowded ballot should gradually be relieved. The change that reduced a player’s time on the ballot from 15 to 10 years will also help. The 2017 class of ballot newcomers, headlined by Vladimir Guerrero, Ivan Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, is not as strong as some recent classes which should help ballot holdovers. Schilling and Mussina should move up since no other starting pitchers with serious Hall of Fame credentials are likely to be on the ballot
Bill Gilbert
1/12/2016
____________________
“Hey, Kid! This is a pretty tough club when a guy like me can only break into the lineup as a pitcher!” ~Babe Ruth
When we put together the starting lineup for the best home run hitting club in MLB history by position, including pitcher and designated hitter, one factor jumps in front of anyone who has followed the game for the past half century with totally clarity. – The members of the club who are also steroids-suspects are absolutely clear and obvious among the total ten players on the list. – Did everyone else get “4” on their first count from top to bottom?
In fact, the first three men on the homers per season list are all poster boys for the first wave of scandal noted. Then later came the cranky Yankee who claimed he wasn’t lying when he seemed to be. Also notable, and well-known, is the fact that all these guys may as well be racing a snowball on its way to the gates of hell as they chase their dreams for induction into the Hall f Fame. It isn’t happening for the same men that Time Magazine credited for saving baseball in 1998 from the unrelenting stench of the 1994 season in which the hardball business wars between management and labor resulted in the abbreviation of the schedule and the first cancellation of a World Series in ninety years.
And now, in 2016, yesterday’s 1998 home run heroes are today’s bums as far as the BBWAA voters and an apparent majority of baseball fans are concerned. What happened to us, folks, did we all just make a minor regression to our childhood comic book days for the sake of hailing McGwire and Sosa as the second coming of Batman and Robin? If we did, it simply follows from there that Time Magazine bit into the same pack of baseball card bubble gum.
| Home Runs Single Season Leaders in Home Runs By Position |
|||||
| Name & Position | Home Runs | Year | Team | League | Rank |
| Johnny Bench, C | 45 | 1970 | Cincinnati Reds | NL | 118 tied |
| Hank Greenberg, 1B | 58 | 1938 | Detroit Tigers | AL | 11 tied |
| Rogers Hornsby, 2B | 42 | 1922 | St. Louis Cardinals | NL | 191 tied |
| Jimmie Foxx, 3B | 58 | 1932 | Philadelphia Athletics | AL | 10 |
| Alex Rodriguez, SS | 57 | 2002 | Texas Rangers | AL | 14 tied |
| Barry Bonds, LF | 73 | 2001 | San Francisco Giants | NL | 1 |
| Sammy Sosa, CF | 66 | 1998 | Chicago Cubs | NL | 3 |
| Roger Maris, RF | 61 * | 1961 | New York Yankees | AL | 7 |
| Mark McGwire, DH | 70 | 1998 | St. Louis Cardinals | NL | 2 |
| Babe Ruth, P-OF | 29 | 1919 | Cleveland Indians | AL | (1 as P) |
We picked Ruth as our pitcher based on his then MLB record (for any hitter) 29 in 1919 and 49 total during his six years (1914-19) as a member of the Red Sox. We know that in Boston he played some outfield too, especially in 1919, but he still pitched enough to qualify for this special club. Many sources prefer to list right handed Wes Ferrell of the 1931 Cleveland Indians as the pure pitching HR-hitting leader with 9 taters for that season. Ferrell also had 38 career HR for the pure-pitching lead in long balls for his position. Heck, we could add him as our right-handed alternative to the Babe as a second pitcher for big power club.
As per usual, these little exercises are simply part of the way we spend our staring-out-the-window-winter-time at the Pecan Park Eagle, awaiting the sounds and sights and sweet smells of another baseball spring.
Have a nice Tuesday, everybody!
____________________
“Astrodome Automatons,
Our brains all work just fine!
We’re made right here in the Mother Ship,
World Wonders – No. 9!”
While having breakfast this morning to the television news from yesterday, I heard something I missed in last night’s news reports of the 30-0 drubbing the Houston Texans took from the Kansas City Chiefs in the Saturday NFL wild card first round of the playoffs. Responding to an obvious question, Texans Head Coach Bill O’Brien said that it never occurred to him to lift the incredibly failing quarterback Brian Hoyer in favor of his replacement, Brandon Weeden.
How so? In talking “Brian Hoyer”, we’re not talking Tom Brady, Johnny Unitas, Roger Staubach, Bart Starr, or Joe Willie Namath. – We’re talking about the same guy O’Brien yanked early in his first faltering moment against KC in the season opener. The Texans didn’t win that one either, so why would “thinking about it” by half time yesterday have been such a crime of allegiance by the coach? After all, Hoyer had turned over the ball four times in the first half on three interceptions and a fumble, and the Texans were still in this game of much greater consequence than the season opener, down by only 13-0, with still a chance to win behind a QB with some usable ability. What could have been the big harm of checking to see if Weeden had even a little more lightning left in the bottle he brought to last week’s game?
We do get your earlier point, Coach, that Weeden had little knowledge of the full Texans playbook, but, look – as we tried to express in our consolation column yesterday – at least, the newcomer Weeden had demonstrated in victory last week that he knew how to execute the plays he had learned. – Isn’t there a chance Weeden might have been a better choice than Hoyer, a guy who was well on his way by halftime to showing the world that he may have known all the plays in the Texans playbook, but that he could not seem to make any of them work as planned? When a guy’s only chance of seeing his passes caught is when they are picked off by members of the other team, it doesn’t exactly inspire team confidence or get the home crowd into the game – expect to boo their own QB.
And you are telling us all of this happened yesterday – and it never occurred to you to take Hoyer out and put Weeden in?
C’mon, man!
If all you need to do is put lineups on the field and never change them, even if the plan isn’t working, the Texans may as well hire everyday “bozos” like yours truly and give us a crack at working for the Houston sports team owner who likes to hire, but hates to fire people until they have demonstrated their ineptness for about a decade on the payroll. As for actually doing your job as it needs to be done, it wouldn’t take me long to show that my coach hiring was a big-time mistake. Besides, our everyday “bozo” higher up employment opportunities, sadly, would be sorely limited by the fact that your current and former people in charge already have used up the best two reasons for people getting fired in other NFL cities on a much more frequent basis:
Excuses That Save Jobs with the Texans
(1) With coaches, always apologize for losses as the result of your bad coaching and promise to do better next time, whether you actually do anything or not that results in more victories on any sustainable basis; and,
(2) With general managers, never make drafting or acquiring a superior quarterback your major organizational priority. Simply draft the later round QB prospects and sign the QB free agents whom you think will fit into the offense that your current head coach, whomever that may be, is trying to install.
Maybe the NFL Really Is Rocket Science
If the NFL really is “rocket science,” the Texans are better off by geographical proximity than any other club in the league. After a 20-30 mile drive down I-45 South from 610 South, the club could get with NASA and either hire their new leadership from the Johnson Space Center staff – or, better yet, from the innovative side of things, get NASA to build them a staff of robotic automatons to run things in the front office and on the field.
Re-Purposing the Astrodome Too
Maybe the Super Bowl success of the first BB8 model coach to lead the Houston Texans to a Super Bowl victory could result in the Astrodome being re-purposed into a plant for building successful robotic leadership at all levels of human endeavor. Constructed without the flaw of human ego, these ingenuous robotic leaders would never use “it never occurred to me” as an explanation for inaction on one of their choices in a particular executive decision-making instance. Possessing the capacity for layered digital analysis of their percentage probabilities for goal accomplishment and risk in every possible option, success would become the norm – and failure would be dealt with as program flaw to be corrected.
Unfortunately, it’s too late in the day to have a couple of these BB8 political models ready for the Democratic and Republican parties as their candidates in the November 2016 presidential election. – And, please believe me, I express that regret with all sincerity!
Have a great week, even if is flawed by our own egos and inabilities to see or act upon all of our best decision-making options.
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“Make Your Mark,
Before It’s Too Late,
You’ll Make Better Choices,
With Your Own BB8!”
The Pecan Park Eagle 